Entryism (also referred to as entrism, occasionally as enterism) is a political strategy in which an organisation or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organisation in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program. In situations where the organization being "entered" is hostile to entrism, the entrists may engage in a degree of subterfuge to hide the fact that they are an organisation in their own right.

Socialist entrism

Trotsky's "French Turn"

The French Turn refers to the classic form of entrism advocated by Leon Trotsky in his essays on "the French Turn". In June 1934, he proposed that the French Trotskyists dissolve their Communist League to join the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and that it also dissolve its youth section to join more easily with revolutionary elements. The tactic was adopted in August 1934, despite some opposition. The turn successfully raised the group's membership to 300 activists.

Proponents of the tactic advocated that the Trotskyists should enter the social democratic parties to connect with revolutionary socialist currents within them, and steer those currents toward Leninism. However, entry lasted only for a brief period: the leadership of the SFIO started to expel the Trotskyists. The Trotskyists of the Workers Party of the United States also successfully used their entry into the Socialist Party of America to recruit their youth group and other members. Similar tactics were also used by Trotskyist organisations in other countries, including The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Poland. Entrism was used to connect with and recruit leftward-moving political currents inside radical parties.

Since the turn in France, Marxists have used the tactic even if they had different preconceptions of how long the period of entry would last.

A "split perspective" is sometimes employed in which the smaller party intends to remain in the larger party for a short period of time with the intention of splitting the organisation and leaving with more members than it began with.

Deep entrism/entryism sui generis

In these types of entrism, entrists engage in a long-term perspective in which they work within an organisation for decades in hopes of gaining influence and a degree of power and perhaps even control of the larger organisation.

In entryism sui generis ("of a special type"), Trotskyists, for example, do not openly argue for the building of a Trotskyist party. "Deep entryism" refers to the long duration.

The tactic is closely identified with Michel Pablo and Gerry Healy, who were leaders of the Fourth International in the late 1940s and 1950s. The "deep entry" tactic was developed as a way for Trotskyists to respond to the Cold War. In countries where there were mass social democratic or communist parties, it was as difficult to be accepted into these parties as Trotskyist currents as to build separate Trotskyist parties. Therefore, Trotskyists were advised to join the mass party.

In Europe, this was the approach used, for example, by The Club in the Labour Party, and by Fourth Internationalists inside the Communist Parties. In France, Trotskyist organizations, most notably the Parti des Travailleurs and its predecessors, have successfully entered trade unions and mainstream left-wing parties.

Open entrism

Some political parties, such as the Workers' Party in Brazil or the Scottish Socialist Party allow political tendencies to openly organise within them. In these cases the term entryism is not usually used. Political groups which work within a larger organisation but also maintain a "public face" often reject the term "entrism" but are nevertheless sometimes considered to be entryists by the larger organisation.

Canada

Although the term entryism was used little if at all, opponents accused David Orchard and his supporters of attempting to win the leadership of the former Progressive Conservative Party in the late 1990s and early 2000s (decade) with the intention of dramatically changing its policies.

Orchard had made his name as a leading opponent of free trade, which was perhaps the singular signature policy of the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While opponents pointed to this remarkable distance, Orchard and his supporters argued that they represented "traditional" Tory values and economic nationalism that the olderConservative Party, and the Progressive Conservative party before Mulroney, had espoused, namely that of John Diefenbaker.

Opponents of the 2003 merger between the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties also charged Alliance members with infiltration. It was widely speculated that most, if not all of the approximately 25,000 Canadians who swelled the PC Party's membership before the merger vote were Alliance members. They would likely have voted in favour of the merger.

Members of Socialist Action, a small Trotskyist group, play a leading role in the New Democratic PartySocialist Caucus, a small faction on the left wing of that social democratic party, and advocate that their members join and engage with the NDP. This however does not fit with most definitions of entryism due to their continued existence apart and separate from the NDP in addition to their work there. Fightback, a rival Trotskyist organization, carries out a more classical form of entryism in the NDP, particularly in its youth wings, modelling itself after the British Militant tendency which practiced entryism in the Labour Party and which at its peak was the one of the most successful entryist organizations on record.

After the fall of Social Credit in British Columbia, the British Columbia Liberal Party saw the shift of former Social Credit members into the BC Liberal party. As a result, the new membership saw the party shift much more towards the right on fiscal policy. In this way, entryism led to a complete takeover of the original party by former Social Credit members. This however isn't formal entryism as former Social Credit members did not operate their own organization within the Liberal Party.

During the 1990s, another conservative tendency emerged within the National Party through the establishment of the informal Christian Voice group in 1998. However, it had faded by the mid-2000s when several minor Christian political parties including former National MP Graeme Lee's Christian Democrat Party, Peter Dunne's United Future, and Brian Tamaki's Destiny New Zealand emerged to court the evangelical Christian vote.[5] As a result of these attempts at taking over the party, National quietly centralised its candidate selection procedures.[6][7]

Despite these tensions with moral conservatives, National Party leader Don Brash still accepted covert assistance from the Exclusive Brethren during the 2005 general elections. This assistance included organizing a separate electoral canvassing and advertising campaign which attacked the incumbent Labour and Greencoalition government. This strategy backfired and contributed to Prime MinisterHelen Clark's second re-election.[8] Due to the controversy arising from the Exclusive Brethren's canvassing on behalf of National, Brash's successor Prime Minister John Key explicitly rejected any assistance from the Exclusive Brethren during the 2008 election.[9]

United States

Another example of charges of entryism involving the United States Reform Party involved supporters of Fred Newman and the New Alliance Party joining the Reform Party en masse and gaining some level of control over the New York State affiliate of the Reform Party. Another United States politician, Lyndon LaRouche, has attempted an entryist strategy in the Democratic Party since 1980, but with little success.[12]